Separating the core definitional feature and the signature expressions of dispositional perfectionism: Implications for theory, research, and practice

Abstract

Abstract Perfectionism involves aiming and striving toward excessive goals accompanied with overly critical self-evaluations. In my current theory elaboration, I propose that the cognitive, socio-cognitive, and socio-behavioral manifestations that accompany perfectionism should be operationalized as correlates rather than indicators of the core definitional feature of dispositional perfectionism. I offer arguments to explain how theory, research, and intervention will benefit from separating these signature expressions from the core definitional feature of perfectionism. In this new framework, signature expressions inhabit their own space in the conceptual domain of perfectionism to better explain their role as putative mechanisms involved in the maintenance of perfectionism and its associations with maladjustment. The results of a published meta-analysis are reanalyzed, and a Monte Carlo simulation is presented to show the promises of the current theory elaboration. In closing, six additional arguments are advanced to explain how this rethinking of the conceptual domain of perfectionism addresses many critical issues in the extant literature.